Lessons of the Mindful
by Usami
Summary: /Tech POV, post 'The Menace of Mastermind'/ I've learned that no matter what you do or discover, there's always room for improvement. And no matter the mistake, big or small, you could always use it to learn from.


Hello again everyone! I'm back!

This idea came to me while I was watching "Menace of the Mastermind" a few weeks back, and I couldn't get it out of my head so I decided to try it out. It's purely just a 'what-if' thing, but it was kind of fun to write. Just please try to keep an open mind while reading this story.

Here we go...!

**Lessons of the Mindful**

I sighed heavily as I stood in my lab and looked around at the mess that was left behind from Mallory's recent "visit." I still can't believe that she had the nerve to tamper with _my_ inventions – the inventions that I put all my mind and energy into. _My_ work, _my_ creations, _my babies_.

Just like back when we were working together at the Institute. When she had tampered with that baby for her own needs. Then again, we had made that one together, but still…

Whoa…! That sounded weird….

Replaying that sentence again, I shuddered at the very idea of it. That was something I'd like to forget.

Shaking my head, I looked around the lab again and tried to decide where to start cleaning up first. Various mechanical parts were strewn everywhere, papers scattered all over the place, and the machines she had tampered with still not returned to their proper places. I understood the machines and parts, but why were the papers among the mess?

In any case, it all had to be cleaned up. I probably shouldn't have waited so long before starting this task, but the temptation of vacation had been so inviting, who was I to resist? Workaholic though I am, I deserve some rest every once in a while.

But that had ended quite some time ago, so now it was back to work. Or at least it would be if I could ever clean up my lab again.

I bent down and began gathering all the papers left behind from the torrent that had been Mallory's revenge, thinking they'd be the easiest to clean up. As I glanced over each sheet, I noted that they contained notes or detailed plans for my works, either ones already made or others that were still only real in drawings and theories.

If she breaks out again and makes one of these, I swear I'm going to…

Finally, with all the papers in my hands, I walked over to the mini mount of jumbled mess that was once my desk. As I placed the stack down, adding to the pile and tried to figure how to clean it all up, I couldn't help but think how I wouldn't have this problem if I wasn't such a pack-rat (so to speak). But I just couldn't bring myself to get rid of things, useful or otherwise. As a scientist, I've learned that no matter what you do or discover, there's always room for improvement. And no matter the mistake, big or small, you could always use it to learn from.

That's why I kept everything I've ever worked on, if I've made it or not, if it works or not. Because I know that I can end up learning from it.

But that doesn't help my mess problem…

So as I attempted to straighten out my desk, I began wondering why Mallory had gone through all this stuff. She certainly couldn't use any of it against me (unless she builds them for herself). But she hadn't taken any of them, since I saw none were missing. Did she memorize them? I suppose she could have if her oversized head gives her a photographic memory. But why had they been tossed all over the place? It was like she had been looking for something.

Sticking some of the loose pages into folders, I opened a drawer to put it away and clear a portion of the desk. I stopped, however, when I found that the drawer was already occupied.

Lying inside it was my old pair of glasses and my old lab coat when I was back at the Institute. It's been a while since I've seen those.

Placing the folder down on the desktop, I reached down to pick up the heavy piece of eyewear. Ever since I was younger I had worked with mechanical objects, often late into the night. As such, my eyes were often strained and I became slightly dependent on glasses to see. Eventually, the lenses became thick enough to serve a double use as work goggles.

When the meteor hit, though, and I received my regenerative powers, I was able to fix the state of my eyes. So the need for glasses was no longer required.

Placing the eyewear down, I reached for my coat and pulled it out of the drawer. Fighting villains as a superhero helped me maintain a certain physique that I never would have before as a simple scientist and technician. Wondering if the lab coat would still fit, I swung it around and slipped it on.

As I did so, however, I noticed a small piece of paper flutter to the ground. After buttoning up the coat (and noting with a mixture of amusement and disappointment that it _did _still fit), I bent down and picked up the offending slip. As I looked at it, I felt as though time – and possibly even my heart – had stopped.

Staring back at me was Mallory before the bio waves altered her appearance. Her eyes, though hidden behind thin spectacle frames, held a playful amusement to them. The white lab coat failed at covering the full figure of her body, and there was a laugh on her lips as both her hands held onto mine, trying to pull me back to the camera's center focus. I, on the other hand, was cut off against the picture's edge, attempting to flee before the shot was taken.

Generally, I'm not a very photogenic person. Probably because I hate getting my picture taken, but that's not the point.

I had forgotten about this photo, hidden away in my lab coat. Taken shortly before Mallory and I started building our project together, the photograph had been buried along with all other memories that I just didn't want to recall.

I had told the others that I had been assigned as Mallory's tutor, and that had been true. But what I hadn't told them – perhaps because a part of me had wanted to forget – was that Mallory and I had shared a more…intimate bond back then.

Of course it had started out as just an innocent tutor/tutee relationship. She had just arrived in the middle of the semester at the Institute, and I was asked to help her along. I assumed it had been to keep me out of trouble and prevent me from causing any more damage to certain labs, but I went along with it. Given her advanced intelligence, she was younger than most others at the Institute due to skipping a few grades, and I understood that well enough having been in that situation before myself.

Nothing really happened that was out of the ordinary during the first week or so. I would assist her with any problems she had and sometimes gave her some assignments to work on to satisfy her thirst for knowledge. I have to admit though…I was fascinated with her clever mind.

It was also during that first week that I learned that she, like I, had been out to prove something to the world. For me, I wanted to show that I was capable of building devices that would help (which was hard to prove with all the difficulties I had sometimes). For Mallory, she wanted to change the view that many people had of her based on her physical appearance. Even now, many people unfortunately still believe that certain people were intelligent and certain people were attractive. Mixing the two traits was something that was just not done.

And Mallory had been beautiful.

But there had been so much more to her than simply that. The things she was capable of amazed me. Her thoughts and ideas, her own inventions and creations, her desire to further increase her personal intelligence, and the pure enjoyment for the things she worked on…I had never spent so much time with anyone like her before.

I suppose it was _because_ of all the time we had spent together that helped our relationship along. The more we were around each other, the more we learned about one another. The more we learned, the closer we became. Was it inevitable that we would "become a couple" by society standards? Perhaps. But I actually don't remember the exact details of our relationship. I remember we were very close, and we often shared a friendly competitive nature with each other to increase our efforts to enhance our abilities, but most of the things we did were but a faint shadow in my mind.

Considering that this was my first serious relationship with anyone, I should be able to recall more about it. But I guess I simply don't because I had spent most of my time trying to forget about it.

Shortly after we had gotten together, I began to notice Mallory changing in a strange way. Though her _desire _to acquire knowledge was the same, the _reason_ for it slowly became a greedy and selfish one. The more she learned, the more she began to gain a sense of swelling pride. In her mind, she felt she _deserved_ all the knowledge because she was _the _best and _the _smartest there was, and everyone else simply would waste the gift of intellect.

But for some reason or other, I had always overlooked these details about her. I pretended that I didn't see what was going on with her personality, because I figured that people were allowed to change. Who was I to dictate her life? Besides, it had been my very first relationship, and perhaps I was afraid of losing that if I had spoken up.

That decision was something I really came to regret later when Mallory had altered our device – the one that we made together – to absorb all other people's intelligence for herself. I couldn't let her to do that, no matter how I felt about her. So I did what I had to do in order to stop her, but I didn't predict that the bio feedback from the device would mutate her appearance (though I must say it was a perfect manifestation of what she had become). Then to prevent her from causing any further damage, I _had _to call the police and have her taken away.

Needless to say…the relationship was over.

It was probably the most painful thing I had ever gone through. The breach of trust from someone so close to me, someone I had cared about and I thought cared about me, was something I just couldn't – or at least thought I couldn't – deal with.

Ever since I was young, I had been aware of my advanced desire for knowledge and love for things mechanical. My dream had been to be a scientist and create masterful inventions to help people. And Mallory knew that. She knew that because I had told her that, as I had told her all about myself when we had been together. I had trusted her with myself because I thought I could.

And then she had altered our device for her own selfish gain. To steal people's intelligence to increase her own. Somehow, I felt betrayed by her actions, and I found myself hating her for that, for changing our machine – in which I built at least half of it – and modified it behind my back for a reason that completely contradicted my own for building it in the first place. I had wanted the machine to help people, not take away from them. I just couldn't forgive her for that.

Except…the more I think about it now, the more unfair I couldn't help but feel I was being. Not that I would ever admit that aloud. But I was beginning to feel that maybe the way I was going about this was flawed in my approach.

Was it possible that maybe I had put too much strain on our relationship? Certainly I was never really lonely growing up, but Mallory was the first person I have ever been really close and intimate with. Had I been expecting too much from that first relationship with her? Had I been hoping that she would share in _my _goals to help others even though I clearly told myself that she had aspirations of her own? Was the pain and anger I felt towards her just bitter disappointment that she didn't fulfill that hope?

And…to be honest…how really different am I from her anyway? I remember now that at one time in our relationship we both agreed to do whatever it took to accomplish our goals – our dreams. Placing extremity aside, wouldn't that have been what Mallory was trying to do that day? Accomplish her goal of achieving knowledge. And though I had stopped her on the _stated_ grounds that her actions had been wrong and I couldn't let her steal the minds of other people, was that really the accurate reason for justifying what I had done? After all, I had spent a good amount of my career simply trying to prove that I was capable of creating a device that could assist people. If I had let Mallory succeed in her attempts, all my effort and work would have been for nothing.

So could it be said that I had stopped her not because of a _pure _desire to protect people, but because it would have jeopardized my own goals if she obtained what she wanted since we had built that device together? If she wanted to, could Mallory argue that the only real reason I stopped her from attaining her dreams – even if her methods _were _morally wrong – was to preserve my own? That the only thing I had really cared about was preserving my work and reputation so that I could be recognized for helping others?

Regardless of the altruistic goals I had previously had, if my actions had been just to preserve those goals, then I could be no better than Mallory.

And though I felt as though she betrayed my dreams, did she feel the same way about me?

Slowly I got to my feet, still staring at the picture I held in my hand. This had all been my fault, hadn't it? Everything concerning Mallory had been all because of me. I had seen her changing, her actions and motives fueled by selfish desires. I had _seen _it, but I did nothing about it. Maybe if I had talked to her in the beginning of her personal transformation, I could have prevented her from becoming the way she is now. If I could have done that, then maybe I wouldn't have had to stop her the way I did, and her appearance wouldn't have been altered. If _that _had never happened, perhaps she wouldn't have felt the need to seek revenge on me, and therefore wouldn't have taken over the tower and threatened the others' lives.

I didn't care that she had a problem with me. But I hated her for involving the others. And now I was beginning to hate myself for it as well.

Because even if I had no control over her actions, even though I never asked her to do what she did, even though I didn't know any of this would happened, I could have prevented it all from the beginning. I could have…but I didn't.

I sighed softly as I continued to stare at the picture. So what do I do now? Knowing the information that I have, what should I do about it? What _could_ I do about it?

I was very tempted to rip up the photograph and just throw it away, forgetting about it all as I had tried to do before. But instead, I slipped it into the pocket of my lab coat. Taking it off, I then folded it and placed it back in the drawer. Because I was a scientist after all, and no matter the mistake – big or small, serious or not – there was always something that can be learned from it for the better.

**The End**

So what did you all think? Personally, I kind of liked the way it turned out, though I have to admit it turned out to be a tad darker than I had meant it to be. But the more I wrote, the more thoughts came up that ended up being incorporated into the story. And here we have it.

Like I said, this was just a purely 'what-if' story, because that's just the way my mind works sometimes and I really have no control over what goes on up there. Still, I wanted to experiment with it, and like I said, I kind of liked the way it turned out.

Anyway, I still have a few stories that I plan on writing, but those will have to wait a while because this week is midterm week, and I have so much to do. But after midterms is spring break, so I'll have plenty of time to write then.

So until then, please review, and no flames if you can help it. Later all!


End file.
